Bangalore's Water Situation

Pranay Kotasthane’s post on the history of how the water situation in Bangalore has evolved was highly informative.

“First, half of the city’s water supply comes from Kaveri, which is 90 km away and 350 m lower.”

That “350 m lower” part is very significant. First, it means the water has to be lifted. The electricity bill for lifting comes to ₹3 crores per day. Second:

“Before independence, Bengaluru, due to its elevation, relied largely on the rainwater stored in nearby lakes. But as the city population grew, the engineering marvel of pumping water up from the Kaveri was dreamed and realised.”

In turn, that led to a decrease in the dependence on lakes. As the lakes fell into disuse, encroachments began to increase. Since the lakes had begun to matter less (at that point), the pushback against encroachment was proportionally low.

 

Historically, the other half of the city’s water needs were met by groundwater. But, as the city began to grow with tech parks followed by apartment complexes, more and more of the land began to be covered with asphalt and concrete. The water could no longer seep into the ground, leading to a fall in the water table.

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In addition, Kotasthane’s post gets into the policy aspect via a framework called the “Wicksellian Connection”. It’s easy to understand – think of three circles corresponding to “those who decide”, “those who benefit”, and “those who pay”. Now imagine a Venn diagram of how much these three circles intersect. The more they intersect, the better the accountability and better the outcome. That’s Wicksellian Connection for you.

 

He evaluates Bangalore’s water system with a Wicksellian Connection lens. Take the “lift the Kaveri water” point. The state-level politicians decide, the residents of (mostly) old Bangalore benefit, and the residents of the entire state pay for it. The three circles barely intersect.

 

Next, take the groundwater angle. The tech parks and apartment complexes account for the “lion’s share of the city’s economic activity and, hence, taxes, including property taxes”. They are the ones who pay. But these apartments barely get any water from the city government – in fact, they have to treat the water, and do rain water harvesting. The benefit of all this tax goes to the entire state, and to some extent, old Bangalore which gets subsidized water. Again, all of this is decided by state level politicians. The circles doesn’t intersect much.

 

The policy solution to the water situation, he says, is to take steps to get the three circles to overlap. Like removing water subsidies. And reducing the dependency on Kaveri and in turn increasing the dependency on the lakes. Once the circles start to overlap, better decisions and outcomes could follow.

 

Whether or not his policy prescriptions are right, it certainly made for a good analysis of the problem itself, both from a historical and a policy perspective.